Hi Experts, Please share your valuable opinions which could help to improve writing skills. Thanks in advance,
1. Read 2. Write 3. Seek critique 4. Read more 5. Write more 6. Seek more critique 7. Repeat until better writer and/or alcoholic
I agree with @Tenderiser - although I would say reading is 1 and 2 and 3. Read other people's critiques too. And EDIT. My original draft is pants. It took me years to realise that my best writing comes in the editing stage. (edit: oh, and read lots of different genres: as a kid I read Dickens, followed by Wilber Smith, followed by Stephen King followed by Orwell. My favourite genres were Horror and Fantasy, but I read loads of other books too, including family sagas - I remember devouring Rich Man, Poor Man in a day or so. You learn a lot by reading around)
My recommendation is slightly different to Tenderiser's: go to the writing workshops and critique other peoples work and read other peoples critques of the same piece of writing: you will learn something about your own writing by being critical of others, and also of reading what other people spot that you don't. You won't always be right, and you won't always agree with the critiques: but that is part of the learning too. Every reader takes something different from the same piece
^ That's a good point. Most people would say you learn more by critiquing than being critiqued. For me personally, it's the other way round, but I do think I'm unusual in that regard.
I agree with @BruceA and @Tenderiser. Just practice, learn, explore.Find what works best for you and hone that to the best it can be.
For me it is a psychology thing. You know the thing that is said about the traits in other people that you really hate are some of the traits that you have (but you can't see them). Sometimes it is difficult to see what is wrong with your own work until you see it in other peoples... Also some people take criticism better than others, some people can't learn from people highlighting their own issues, but DO learn when they see other people being pulled up on it.
Just because there's always more to learn doesn't mean there's not an expert level of experience. EDIT: Oops, that missed "not" completely changes the meaning.
To improve? 1. Read poetry - especially current stuff, it will help you to keep your descriptions beautiful and beautifully brief 2. Read outside your favorite genre. Something more challenging 3. Take notes of favorite sentences and scenes. Deconstruct them to see why they impressed you 4. Write 5. Edit what you write 6. Seek critique on what you wrote 7. Critique other pieces of work on sites like this. It's easier to point out what someone else is doing wrong than what you're doing wrong 8. Keep some notes of the critiques you make to help reinforce the mistakes to avoid.